Jesse’s Reviews > V. > Status Update

“…some of us do go nowhere and can con ourselves into believing it to be somewhere: it is a kind of talent and objections to it are rare but even at that captious.”

Chapter Sixteen
Sahha

I don’t know where this is going but I am dreading Profane’s slow dissolution and the apparent termination of his relationship with Rachel.

This section has the dissolution of Profane’s relationship with Rachel as Pynchon slowly pushes him together with Stencil and Paola… and another deeply uncomfortable chapter, “V. In Love”, which dwells more on Pynchon’s decadence and in this a character study of a ballerina who was molested by her father and effectively disowned by her mother and trauma and psychosexual theory and

Never in a million years would I have guessed the plot twist with Paola.

The Malta narrative is the confession of Paola’s father, confusing for its insistence on referring to a handful of progressive personalities of Fausto as he looks back at epochs in his life. It is a tired, world-weary story of the siege of Malta and further develops Pynchon’s feelings on decadence and “inanimateness”.

The introduction of Pig seems to be a confounding factor for Profane’s journey but it is also by way of his amorous pursuit a sneaky way of reminding us that Paola is supposed to be in this social circle as characters constantly wonder where Paola is and what she is doing. We find out, leading into chapter 11, what she has been up to, and to no one’s surprise Stencil’s suspicions are somewhat founded.

oh god no

this starts out as a description of a German engineer in post-WW2 west Africa during a rebellion and goes into a dark, dark place as Foppl’s story of the genocide and enslavement of the West African people 18 years prior intrudes into Mondaugen’s careening through the debauched German house party, a sort of 120 Days of Sodom. I’m, I don’t even

Vheissu is the same and yet another thing entirely, another romantic intrigue set in the past and involving the British Foreign Office (and Victoria) yet again. The description of Vheissu, the elder’s interpretation of it, reminds me of Profane’s more moody musings, like his country of Rachel, of alienation.

A thorough description of a nose job, including the traumatic story of the why of the plastic surgeon; hunting alligators in the sewers, where an insane priest had once tried to convert the rats to Roman Catholicism while simultaneously eating them (and falling in love with V.eronica!!); Stencil I believe is shot as if he is an alligator; and Much Much More.

This section elaborates more on Rachel’s social circle and then plunges into Stencil’s quest for V. For a moment I thought that he was literally an undercover spy in each of the segments of Chapter III; now I can see that he is imagining the event from the POV of “impressions” of people who may or may not have existed. The political intrigue of English spies in Egypt is a fascinating wrinkle to the overall.

I love this. I am reminded of all of the tangents of Catch-22 but this novel is more bewildering because the first part we have followed Profane in his meandering march into depression and now, in following Rachel, have just encountered Stencil and thus the first mention of the titular concept, V. There is A LOT to unpack, flavored by gross Naval excesses and New York Jewish culture.